HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We now have four years of the very first Black presidency behind us.

Despite the insane vilification of Barack Obama and the extraordinary overreach of the country’s rightwing politicians and media, the most extraordinary, lowdown, miserable NRAad going after the President’s children, and the wild portrayals of Fox News mouthpieces whose hypocrisy fairly oozes from their on-camera personas and dependence on a forgetful viewership over time, a few million folks on the other end of the political spectrum did, in fact, reluctantly mark their ballots for his reelection.

Why? And how would Martin Luther King be assessing this first four years of the first African American to occupy that end of Pennsylvania Avenue? Does Mr. Obama embody the Dream Dr. King talked about. Or the Black pride he encouraged (“Walk with your head high! Be a man!”) in other settings outside of Washington, DC?

The enthusiasm with which many progressives (most of them white, of course) greeted the nation’s first nominee of color and helped send to the White House began to fade quickly as Mr. Obama, little by little, day by day, displayed a baffling willingness to maintain the policies of his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush. This was immediately true in the initial days of his inheriting the financial mess dumped on his administration in the waning days of the previous Congress and the fiscal disaster that proved to be the worst recession since the Great Depression. Mr. Obama’s Wall-Street-based donors, soon to be in charge of his Treasury Department, the Fed and the Council of Economic Adviser recommended – and he bought into – a multi-billion-dollar bailout, not of the ravaged and savaged homeowners entering history’s worst foreclosure crisis and underwater drag on housing values, but of already super-wealthy investment bankers who eventually were caught making more billions by betting against their own investors.

Then came Guantanamo, which Mr. Obama had promised n his campaign to close and which festers still as a sore on the nation’s conscience. Then Iraq and Afghanistan and, in direct contravention of his campaign promises, signed the first renewal and recently, the second of National Defense Authorization Act which legalizes government wiretaps without a warrant and crushes dissent in the streets and sends drones over foreign and domestic territories to either spy on or kill so-called targets the President unilaterally deems a threat, including American citizens who die without a shred of due process – a charge, a trial and a conviction.

BUT…this is the President who muscled through the Affordable Health Care Act. And wound down the War in Iraq (eventually), and strengthened some of our environmental protections and brought the children of undocumented workers into a state of innocence – if not amnesty.

Mr. Obama and his youthful, attractive family, his winning smile and incredibly confident, articulate voice, along with his squeaky clean image, has maintained a certain level of comfort among a slim majority of Americans. Yet, the political machinery behind his reelection was deceptively competent and engineered such an awesome victory that the self-deceived right and its billionaire PACs were completely blindsided when the President completely swamped Mitt Romney in the Electoral College.

So. On this day when the inspiring ghost of Martin Luther King is heard once again in terms that echo still today and almost singing,

…how would Dr. King look upon this Presidency today? What changes in the plight of people of color might he have expected? Would he be justified? King hated the Vietnam Conflict and other wars that pitted Black Americans against other cultures of color. How would he feel about the Mideast, Afghanistan, Israel, the drone wars? How would he view Mr. Obama’s almost blank slate in addressing racial inequality and white privilege, the urban public education achievement gap, and the burgeoning prison populations everywhere, top heavy with Black, Latino and American Indian males?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI bring in two observers of the political scene as well as the racial inequality index of our communities. (We wish we could have added a female African American voice to this mix, but the women we contacted are all meeting with Children’s Defense Fund founder and CEO, Marian Wright Edelman. Perhaps another day.)

MOST RECENT SHOW

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some questions posed by Historian and American Studies pioneer, David Noble, might have some of us scratching our heads – for a minute.

“Why do modern people believe that there will be perpetual economic growth?”

Let’s stop right there and give some thought to this question. By modern people, David Noble is not zeroing in on living Americans; he sees modernity as dating back to the Greeks when men the likes of Plato began an era, nay, millennia, of thinking that instead of caving into the reality of our limits, or of the cycles of life, or what he calls a timeful culture, there began the hubris of timelessness inherent in mankind’s perceived ability to control nature, interrupting its built-in cycles of life and death and disease, and extending life, perhaps forever someday, by conquering death.

Such beliefs formed the core, the nucleus of modern humans trying to throw off traditional cultures and insisting that nothing can – or should – stand in the way of human “progress” and ever-expanding capitalism that presumes that economic and natural Utopia lies just around that next corner only to see how the natural limits have created rising poverty, racism, economic turmoil and an instability in culture and nature we never thought possible.

It also, says David, presumes that the Earth is not the living organism it most certainly is, and that we may be the only species will to deny it in order to conquer it, to extract all of its natural resources and convert to cash all that we can of the clean air and water we once inherited as members of that most stable, self-correcting world in which, thanks to the cycles of life and death and other natural phenomena, we’ve seen evolution and revolution.

This is how David taught his American History and American Studies classes – but with a wry smile and a jaundiced eye on the “American Way” even as he explored The Progressive Era from his Master’s Thesis on down to the present. David taught in costume. He taught lying on his back (simply because he couldn’t stand up from a bad back). He brought history and ideas to life and he force everyone to think – which is how the American Studies Department came into being in the first place. Now, at 87, with a household of family members resembling an agrarian settlement around him, the man still teaches, though retired officially, still studies others’ theories he maintains only reinforces his critiques of modern humanity.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL, assisted by MICHELLE ALIMORADI, will revisit his old American History instructor to talk about where western “civilization” may have gone off the rails and why we must the natural limits to growth we as the New World culture of capitalism absolutely believe is essential to its success.

GUEST:

DAVID W. NOBLE – Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota Department of American Studies; Author, Debating the End of History and nearly a dozen other books calling out the Two Worlds Theory

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We now have four years of the very first Black presidency behind us.

Despite the insane vilification of Barack Obama and the extraordinary overreach of the country’s rightwing politicians and media, the most extraordinary, lowdown, miserable NRAad going after the President’s children, and the wild portrayals of Fox News mouthpieces whose hypocrisy fairly oozes from their on-camera personas and dependence on a forgetful viewership over time, a few million folks on the other end of the political spectrum did, in fact, reluctantly mark their ballots for his reelection.

Why? And how would Martin Luther King be assessing this first four years of the first African American to occupy that end of Pennsylvania Avenue? Does Mr. Obama embody the Dream Dr. King talked about. Or the Black pride he encouraged (“Walk with your head high! Be a man!”) in other settings outside of Washington, DC?

The enthusiasm with which many progressives (most of them white, of course) greeted the nation’s first nominee of color and helped send to the White House began to fade quickly as Mr. Obama, little by little, day by day, displayed a baffling willingness to maintain the policies of his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush. This was immediately true in the initial days of his inheriting the financial mess dumped on his administration in the waning days of the previous Congress and the fiscal disaster that proved to be the worst recession since the Great Depression. Mr. Obama’s Wall-Street-based donors, soon to be in charge of his Treasury Department, the Fed and the Council of Economic Adviser recommended – and he bought into – a multi-billion-dollar bailout, not of the ravaged and savaged homeowners entering history’s worst foreclosure crisis and underwater drag on housing values, but of already super-wealthy investment bankers who eventually were caught making more billions by betting against their own investors.

Then came Guantanamo, which Mr. Obama had promised n his campaign to close and which festers still as a sore on the nation’s conscience. Then Iraq and Afghanistan and, in direct contravention of his campaign promises, signed the first renewal and recently, the second of National Defense Authorization Act which legalizes government wiretaps without a warrant and crushes dissent in the streets and sends drones over foreign and domestic territories to either spy on or kill so-called targets the President unilaterally deems a threat, including American citizens who die without a shred of due process – a charge, a trial and a conviction.

BUT…this is the President who muscled through the Affordable Health Care Act. And wound down the War in Iraq (eventually), and strengthened some of our environmental protections and brought the children of undocumented workers into a state of innocence – if not amnesty.

Mr. Obama and his youthful, attractive family, his winning smile and incredibly confident, articulate voice, along with his squeaky clean image, has maintained a certain level of comfort among a slim majority of Americans. Yet, the political machinery behind his reelection was deceptively competent and engineered such an awesome victory that the self-deceived right and its billionaire PACs were completely blindsided when the President completely swamped Mitt Romney in the Electoral College.

So. On this day when the inspiring ghost of Martin Luther King is heard once again in terms that echo still today and almost singing,

…how would Dr. King look upon this Presidency today? What changes in the plight of people of color might he have expected? Would he be justified? King hated the Vietnam Conflict and other wars that pitted Black Americans against other cultures of color. How would he feel about the Mideast, Afghanistan, Israel, the drone wars? How would he view Mr. Obama’s almost blank slate in addressing racial inequality and white privilege, the urban public education achievement gap, and the burgeoning prison populations everywhere, top heavy with Black, Latino and American Indian males?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI bring in two observers of the political scene as well as the racial inequality index of our communities.

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

Some questions posed by Historian and American Studies pioneer, David Noble, might have some of us scratching our heads – for a minute.

“Why do modern people believe that there will be perpetual economic growth?”

Let’s stop right there and give some thought to this question. By modern people, David Noble is not zeroing in on living Americans; he sees modernity as dating back to the Greeks when men the likes of Plato began an era, nay, millennia, of thinking that instead of caving into the reality of our limits, or of the cycles of life, or what he calls a timeful culture, there began the hubris of timelessness inherent in mankind’s perceived ability to control nature, interrupting its built-in cycles of life and death and disease, and extending life, perhaps forever someday, by conquering death.

Such beliefs formed the core, the nucleus of modern humans trying to throw off traditional cultures and insisting that nothing can – or should – stand in the way of human “progress” and ever-expanding capitalism that presumes that economic and natural Utopia lies just around that next corner only to see how the natural limits have created rising poverty, racism, economic turmoil and an instability in culture and nature we never thought possible.

It also, says David, presumes that the Earth is not the living organism it most certainly is, and that we may be the only species will to deny it in order to conquer it, to extract all of its natural resources and convert to cash all that we can of the clean air and water we once inherited as members of that most stable, self-correcting world in which, thanks to the cycles of life and death and other natural phenomena, we’ve seen evolution and revolution.

This is how David taught his American History and American Studies classes – but with a wry smile and a jaundiced eye on the “American Way” even as he explored The Progressive Era from his Master’s Thesis on down to the present. David taught in costume. He taught lying on his back (simply because he couldn’t stand up from a bad back). He brought history and ideas to life and he force everyone to think – which is how the American Studies Department came into being in the first place. Now, at 87, with a household of family members resembling an agrarian settlement around him, the man still teaches, though retired officially, still studies others’ theories he maintains only reinforces his critiques of modern humanity.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL, assisted by MICHELLE ALIMORADI, will revisit his old American History instructor to talk about where western “civilization” may have gone off the rails and why we must the natural limits to growth we as the New World culture of capitalism absolutely believe is essential to its success.

GUEST:

DAVID W. NOBLE – Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota Department of American Studies; Author, Debating the End of History and nearly a dozen other books calling out the Two Worlds Theory

MOST RECENT SHOW

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Few readers and listeners are unaware that the United States is and has been sending unmanned aircraft with the rather insidious moniker – drones – over a wide swath of countries and territories overseas and targeting specific individuals with their deadly missiles. Another of these occurred Thursday or Friday of this week (Jan 3rd or 4th) inside Pakistan – again. Others occur regularly inside Afghanistan and Yemen. With good reason, howls of anguish and protest have pierced the global cyberspace and diplomatic community over the “collateral damage” –deaths and maiming of civilian innocents caught within the area of the blasts designed to destroy some single US-designated combatant the government calls a terrorist.

Hundreds of women and children have died in the wake of these targeted assassinations. At least three of those targets have been American citizens, tracked down and killed without a shred of the due process American citizens are supposed to receive in the wake of charges that they have committed crimes. This, of course, is an egregious affront to Constitutional guarantees – in other words, illegal actions – administered by this newly re-elected President, who, despite other commendable domestic actions, has adopted a dictator-like cavalier attitude toward due process when it comes to political dissent and national security issues.

This leads us to the next step in drone development: one that could, any day now, start hovering over your house, your home right here in the good USofA.

Hover drone

It is now estimated that some 30,000 drones have been ordered or made available to local law enforcement agencies through grants by US justice officials, only we can’t know about these, either, because the Department of Justice – read Obama Administration – refuses to inform a still-unaware public that the government may now believe it can spy on your town, your city, you neighborhood or your home with secrecy and impunity.The Justice Department's own Inspector General's Year End Report (Top Management and Performance Challenges in the Department) warns about the "challenges" such machines make for a deaprtment whose job it is to protect civil rights and privacy, not dispense with it. Where it could go from there few people want to even think about – and that would be their use as weapons, not just spy machines. (Naomi Wolf insists it’s simply a matter of time.) And drones need not be flyovers, but hovering little camera-bearing robots peeking into windows and backyards and playgrounds – as they did over the Humphrey Dome at the last Vikings-Packers game in Minneapolis Sunday, Dec. 31.

Why does anyone find this necessary? All the former police officers and executive we’ve talked with are as fearful of this tool in the hands of local police agencies and the FBI as any one of us might be.How should we respond to the secrecy surrounding the development of this surveillance machine for domestic use? How should we view the potential for the maximum intrusion into our long-revered privacy these robotics represent? Who’s looking into this extraordinary interruption of American life as we’ve known it? Who’s challenging it?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with various advocates at the national and regional levels as an alert to citizens to take action toward curbing the use of drones – domestic surveillance types, especially.

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Few readers and listeners are unaware that the United States is and has been sending unmanned aircraft with the rather insidious moniker – drones – over a wide swath of countries and territories overseas and targeting specific individuals with their deadly missiles. Another of these occurred Thursday or Friday of this week (Jan 3rd or 4th) inside Pakistan – again. Others occur regularly inside Afghanistan and Yemen. With good reason, howls of anguish and protest have pierced the global cyberspace and diplomatic community over the “collateral damage” –deaths and maiming of civilian innocents caught within the area of the blasts designed to destroy some single US-designated combatant the government calls a terrorist.

Hundreds of women and children have died in the wake of these targeted assassinations. At least three of those targets have been American citizens, tracked down and killed without a shred of the due process American citizens are supposed to receive in the wake of charges that they have committed crimes. This, of course, is an egregious affront to Constitutional guarantees – in other words, illegal actions – administered by this newly re-elected President, who, despite other commendable domestic actions, has adopted a dictator-like cavalier attitude toward due process when it comes to political dissent and national security issues.

This leads us to the next step in drone development: one that could, any day now, start hovering over your house, your home right here in the good USofA.

It is now estimated that some 30,000 drones have been ordered or made available to local law enforcement agencies through grants by US justice officials, only we can’t know about these, either, because the Department of Justice – read Obama Administration – refuses to inform a still-unaware public that the government may now believe it can spy on your town, your city, you neighborhood or your home with secrecy and impunity.The Justice Department's own Inspector General's Year End Report (Top Management and Performance Challenges in the Department) warns about the "challenges" such machines make for a deaprtment whose job it is to protect civil rights and privacy, not dispense with it. Where it could go from there few people want to even think about – and that would be their use as weapons, not just spy machines. (Naomi Wolf insists it’s simply a matter of time.) And drones need not be flyovers, but hovering little camera-bearing robots peeking into windows and backyards and playgrounds – as they did over the Humphrey Dome at the last Vikings-Packers game in Minneapolis Sunday, Dec. 31.

Why does anyone find this necessary? All the former police officers and executive we’ve talked with are as fearful of this tool in the hands of local police agencies and the FBI as any one of us might be.How should we respond to the secrecy surrounding the development of this surveillance machine for domestic use? How should we view the potential for the maximum intrusion into our long-revered privacy these robotics represent? Who’s looking into this extraordinary interruption of American life as we’ve known it? Who’s challenging it?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with various advocates at the national and regional levels as an alert to citizens to take action toward curbing the use of drones – domestic surveillance types, especially.

MAKE CIVICMEDIA YOUR END-OF-YEAR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION BENEFICIARY!!! HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Often, to construct our newsletters each week, we’re Googling like crazy to compile the background of a given topic or guest.

Not so this week, not for our topic on guns and gun violence in Minnesota.

Needless to say, after the still heart-rending assault on Sandy Hook elementary school inNewtown, CT, a few weeks ago (is it already weeks?), the writings – coverages, assertions, opinions, and, yes, faux pas by a wide variety of reporters, commentators, advocates and policymakers – we’re inundated with material.

Much of the reaction to yet another “massacre” of human life by the use of firearms emerges as shockingly insensitive to a sane, nominally democratic, society, all of it trying to make sense out of senseless acts, cynical Congressional inaction and the wide berth given by the US Supreme Court to a badly written Second Amendment, theoretically upheld in its literal ambiguity as to just which circumstances call for the right of citizens to bear arms.

This much we do know: something must bring to as close a halt as possible in this mass arsenal of weaponry we call the United States the increasing number and increasingly shocking carnage inflicted by multi-gun-toting, sadly disturbed and untreated societal outliers.

Let us not forget, however, that this sort of bloodletting is a common, everyday occurrence in scores of other countries and cultures ever in upheaval over deadly dictatorships or massive military crackdowns. Deaths of one’s own brothers and sisters of every age and gender occur by the thousands, even millions, in places where ancient sectarian and tribal hatreds rear their miserable heads. To those peoples, our outrage over incidents here may seem laughable.

But, to us, the very idea of one of us killing 20 children and seven adults in one armed rampage bespeaks a sickness of society as well as the young men (always men, or boys, and always white) who carry them out. These killings are not born of ancient sectarian rivalries. These are all our neighbors, our children, our peace of mind. They leave us stunned and numb and wailing for remedies.

Pro-gun advocates try to obscure the truth, but the very existence of guns in a household multiplies the chances someone in that household – not an intruder, but a family member – will be shot, and that the more guns are allowed to be carried in a state, the more gun deaths occur. The statistics defy refuting, including the dangers of allowing one-on-one gun sales with no background checks, even at official gun shows. And so on.

This week, we look at Minnesota’s remedies – or some possible solutions – to a culture so obsessed with its “right” to own, carry and fire guns that any notion that we should look at the Sandy Hooks of this country, this world, as one thing and one thing only: the lethal tirade of man gone mad and lay off the idea that the arsenal we have created by that obsession has anything to do with its deployment.

We have a governor – a DFL governor, and owner of several guns himself – who is afraid our hands are tied in light of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling a couple of years ago, that states cannot abridge such a ruling, even as the space cadets running theNational Rifle Association (NRA) and our own Rep Tony Cornish insist that we should arm teachers and principals and/or turn our schools into armed sanctuaries with cops at every door. Never, ever, ever blame the proliferation of weapons or the overweening influence of a gun-manufacturing lackey like the NRA, which, under threat of political demise, has cowed most politicians into the most insane series of statutes ever written on behalf of one industry (except, perhaps oil, hardly the deadly substance).

But, for the next two years at least, we now have an all-DFL-controlled state government, and it remains now for those caucuses and this governor to show the compassion and courage needed to finally put some limits on the types of weapons and bullets and magazines Minnesotans may harbor as well as the conditions under which guns can be purchased and a registry of arms created – some of this now prohibited by federal law.

Is it possible the Supreme Court would give way to a few states’ rights now without the basic Second Amendment ruling being violated? Where can we come down on making our homes and schools and public places safer in the face of severe resistance by the NRA and panicky gunowners who know not that the NRA does not represent them as much as it represents gun-makers?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL talks with advocates for gun culture reform and changes in law to bring real protection to our children.

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Few readers and listeners are unaware that the United States is and has been sending unmanned aircraft with the rather insidious moniker – drones – over a wide swath of countries and territories overseas and targeting specific individuals with their deadly missiles. Another of these occurred Thursday or Friday of this week (Jan 3rd or 4th) inside Pakistan – again. Others occur regularly inside Afghanistan and Yemen. With good reason, howls of anguish and protest have pierced the global cyberspace and diplomatic community over the “collateral damage” –deaths and maiming of civilian innocents caught within the area of the blasts designed to destroy some single US-designated combatant the government calls a terrorist.

Hundreds of women and children have died in the wake of these targeted assassinations. At least three of those targets have been American citizens, tracked down and killed without a shred of the due process American citizens are supposed to receive in the wake of charges that they have committed crimes. This, of course, is an egregious affront to Constitutional guarantees – in other words, illegal actions – administered by this newly re-elected President, who, despite other commendable domestic actions, has adopted a dictator-like cavalier attitude toward due process when it comes to political dissent and national security issues.

This leads us to the next step in drone development: one that could, any day now, start hovering over your house, your home right here in the good USofA.

Hover drone

It is now estimated that some 30,000 drones have been ordered or made available to local law enforcement agencies through grants by US justice officials, only we can’t know about these, either, because the Department of Justice – read Obama Administration – refuses to inform a still-unaware public that the government may now believe it can spy on your town, your city, you neighborhood or your home with secrecy and impunity.The Justice Department's own Inspector General's Year End Report (Top Management and Performance Challenges in the Department) warns about the "challenges" such machines make for a deaprtment whose job it is to protect civil rights and privacy, not dispense with it. Where it could go from there few people want to even think about – and that would be their use as weapons, not just spy machines. (Naomi Wolf insists it’s simply a matter of time.) And drones need not be flyovers, but hovering little camera-bearing robots peeking into windows and backyards and playgrounds – as they did over the Humphrey Dome at the last Vikings-Packers game in Minneapolis Sunday, Dec. 31.

Why does anyone find this necessary? All the former police officers and executive we’ve talked with are as fearful of this tool in the hands of local police agencies and the FBI as any one of us might be.How should we respond to the secrecy surrounding the development of this surveillance machine for domestic use? How should we view the potential for the maximum intrusion into our long-revered privacy these robotics represent? Who’s looking into this extraordinary interruption of American life as we’ve known it? Who’s challenging it?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI talk with various advocates at the national and regional levels as an alert to citizens to take action toward curbing the use of drones – domestic surveillance types, especially.

MAKE CIVICMEDIA YOUR END-OF-YEAR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION BENEFICIARY!!! HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Often, to construct our newsletters each week, we’re Googling like crazy to compile the background of a given topic or guest.

Not so this week, not for our topic on guns and gun violence in Minnesota.

Needless to say, after the still heart-rending assault on Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT, a few weeks ago (is it already weeks?), the writings – coverages, assertions, opinions, and, yes, faux pas by a wide variety of reporters, commentators, advocates and policymakers – we’re inundated with material.

Much of the reaction to yet another “massacre” of human life by the use of firearms emerges as shockingly insensitive to a sane, nominally democratic, society, all of it trying to make sense out of senseless acts, cynical Congressional inaction and the wide berth given by the US Supreme Court to a badly written Second Amendment, theoretically upheld in its literal ambiguity as to just which circumstances call for the right of citizens to bear arms.

This much we do know: something must bring to as close a halt as possible in this mass arsenal of weaponry we call the United States the increasing number and increasingly shocking carnage inflicted by multi-gun-toting, sadly disturbed and untreated societal outliers.

Let us not forget, however, that this sort of bloodletting is a common, everyday occurrence in scores of other countries and cultures ever in upheaval over deadly dictatorships or massive military crackdowns. Deaths of one’s own brothers and sisters of every age and gender occur by the thousands, even millions, in places where ancient sectarian and tribal hatreds rear their miserable heads. To those peoples, our outrage over incidents here may seem laughable.

But, to us, the very idea of one of us killing 20 children and seven adults in one armed rampage bespeaks a sickness of society as well as the young men (always men, or boys, and always white) who carry them out. These killings are not born of ancient sectarian rivalries. These are all our neighbors, our children, our peace of mind. They leave us stunned and numb and wailing for remedies.

Pro-gun advocates try to obscure the truth, but the very existence of guns in a household multiplies the chances someone in that household – not an intruder, but a family member – will be shot, and that the more guns are allowed to be carried in a state, the more gun deaths occur. The statistics defy refuting, including the dangers of allowing one-on-one gun sales with no background checks, even at official gun shows. And so on.

This week, we look at Minnesota’s remedies – or some possible solutions – to a culture so obsessed with its “right” to own, carry and fire guns that any notion that we should look at the Sandy Hooks of this country, this world, as one thing and one thing only: the lethal tirade of man gone mad and lay off the idea that the arsenal we have created by that obsession has anything to do with its deployment.

We have a governor – a DFL governor, and owner of several guns himself – who is afraid our hands are tied in light of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling a couple of years ago, that states cannot abridge such a ruling, even as the space cadets running the National Rifle Association (NRA) and our own Rep Tony Cornish insist that we should arm teachers and principals and/or turn our schools into armed sanctuaries with cops at every door. Never, ever, ever blame the proliferation of weapons or the overweening influence of a gun-manufacturing lackey like the NRA, which, under threat of political demise, has cowed most politicians into the most insane series of statutes ever written on behalf of one industry (except, perhaps oil, hardly the deadly substance).

But, for the next two years at least, we now have an all-DFL-controlled state government, and it remains now for those caucuses and this governor to show the compassion and courage needed to finally put some limits on the types of weapons and bullets and magazines Minnesotans may harbor as well as the conditions under which guns can be purchased and a registry of arms created – some of this now prohibited by federal law.

Is it possible the Supreme Court would give way to a few states’ rights now without the basic Second Amendment ruling being violated? Where can we come down on making our homes and schools and public places safer in the face of severe resistance by the NRA and panicky gunowners who know not that the NRA does not represent them as much as it represents gun-makers?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL talks with advocates for gun culture reform and changes in law to bring real protection to our children.

MAKE CIVICMEDIA YOUR END-OF-YEAR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION BENEFICIARY!!! HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Often, to construct our newsletters each week, we’re Googling like crazy to compile the background of a given topic or guest.

Not so this week, not for our topic on guns and gun violence in Minnesota.

Needless to say, after the still heart-rending assault on Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT, a few weeks ago (is it already weeks?), the writings – coverages, assertions, opinions, and, yes, faux pas by a wide variety of reporters, commentators, advocates and policymakers – we’re inundated with material.

Much of the reaction to yet another “massacre” of human life by the use of firearms emerges as shockingly insensitive to a sane, nominally democratic, society, all of it trying to make sense out of senseless acts, cynical Congressional inaction and the wide berth given by the US Supreme Court to a badly written Second Amendment, theoretically upheld in its literal ambiguity as to just which circumstances call for the right of citizens to bear arms.

This much we do know: something must bring to as close a halt as possible in this mass arsenal of weaponry we call the United States the increasing number and increasingly shocking carnage inflicted by multi-gun-toting, sadly disturbed and untreated societal outliers.

Let us not forget, however, that this sort of bloodletting is a common, everyday occurrence in scores of other countries and cultures ever in upheaval over deadly dictatorships or massive military crackdowns. Deaths of one’s own brothers and sisters of every age and gender occur by the thousands, even millions, in places where ancient sectarian and tribal hatreds rear their miserable heads. To those peoples, our outrage over incidents here may seem laughable.

But, to us, the very idea of one of us killing 20 children and seven adults in one armed rampage bespeaks a sickness of society as well as the young men (always men, or boys, and always white) who carry them out. These killings are not born of ancient sectarian rivalries. These are all our neighbors, our children, our peace of mind. They leave us stunned and numb and wailing for remedies.

Pro-gun advocates try to obscure the truth, but the very existence of guns in a household multiplies the chances someone in that household – not an intruder, but a family member – will be shot, and that the more guns are allowed to be carried in a state, the more gun deaths occur. The statistics defy refuting, including the dangers of allowing one-on-one gun sales with no background checks, even at official gun shows. And so on.

This week, we look at Minnesota’s remedies – or some possible solutions – to a culture so obsessed with its “right” to own, carry and fire guns that any notion that we should look at the Sandy Hooks of this country, this world, as one thing and one thing only: the lethal tirade of man gone mad and lay off the idea that the arsenal we have created by that obsession has anything to do with its deployment.

We have a governor – a DFL governor, and owner of several guns himself – who is afraid our hands are tied in light of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling a couple of years ago, that states cannot abridge such a ruling, even as the space cadets running the National Rifle Association (NRA) and our own Rep Tony Cornish insist that we should arm teachers and principals and/or turn our schools into armed sanctuaries with cops at every door. Never, ever, ever blame the proliferation of weapons or the overweening influence of a gun-manufacturing lackey like the NRA, which, under threat of political demise, has cowed most politicians into the most insane series of statutes ever written on behalf of one industry (except, perhaps oil, hardly the deadly substance).

But, for the next two years at least, we now have an all-DFL-controlled state government, and it remains now for those caucuses and this governor to show the compassion and courage needed to finally put some limits on the types of weapons and bullets and magazines Minnesotans may harbor as well as the conditions under which guns can be purchased and a registry of arms created – some of this now prohibited by federal law.

Is it possible the Supreme Court would give way to a few states’ rights now without the basic Second Amendment ruling being violated? Where can we come down on making our homes and schools and public places safer in the face of severe resistance by the NRA and panicky gunowners who know not that the NRA does not represent them as much as it represents gun-makers?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL talks with advocates for gun culture reform and changes in law to bring real protection to our children.

MOST RECENT SHOW

MAKE CIVICMEDIA YOUR END-OF-YEAR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION BENEFICIARY!!! HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s probably a good thing that we have the opportunity to catch up with Mel Duncan this Christmas Eve morn. The United States remains in mourning over the violent killings of 27 human beings just over a week ago, 20 of them very young children. Deadly human conflict never ceases. That said, few men – or women, for that matter – can match Mel Duncan’s charismatic quest for peace in this world and in this community.

Four years ago, Mel stepped down as founding director of what will surely be his last organizational leadership position – the Nonviolent Peaceforce. After years working almost exclusively on public policy and social justice issues in Minnesota, something moved him to spread his rather extraordinary mix of quiet affect with a drive and determination for moving issues from concept to reality that he adopted a notion that “various kinds of pressure and influence (could) change the behavior of armed actors” in the ever-present venues of conflict around the globe.

Mel Duncan started his group, spent some long time raising money and awareness of the need for nonviolent intervention between belligerents in many countries, more often than not civil conflicts in which the mere presence of unarmed civilians could defuse potential deadly clashes at particular checkpoints within those nations.

Mel helped organize Advocating Change Together, the Minnesota Jobs with Peace Campaign, the Wellstone for Senate campaign and the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action now merged into TakeAction Minnesota.

Mel Duncan is a graduate of Macalester College, St. Paul Minnesota. In 2006 he was honored with their Distinguished Citizen award. He also holds a Masters degree from the New College of California.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship honored him with their 2010 Peace Seeker award. The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA awarded him their 2007 Pfeffer International Peace Prize on behalf of Nonviolent Peaceforce’s “courageous efforts in conflict regions around the world.”The Utne Reader named him as one of “50 Visionaries Who are Changing Our World” in November of 2008.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL will talk for our Christmas Eve hour with Mel Duncan reporting back on what progress has been made and what is needed in the life of the Nonviolent Peaceforce as 2012 comes to an end.

MAKE CIVICMEDIA YOUR END-OF-YEAR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION BENEFICIARY!!! HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Often, to construct our newsletters each week, we’re Googling like crazy to compile the background of a given topic or guest.

Not so this week, not for our topic on guns and gun violence in Minnesota.

Needless to say, after the still heart-rending assault on Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT, a few weeks ago (is it already weeks?), the writings – coverages, assertions, opinions, and, yes, faux pas by a wide variety of reporters, commentators, advocates and policymakers – we’re inundated with material.

Much of the reaction to yet another “massacre” of human life by the use of firearms emerges as shockingly insensitive to a sane, nominally democratic, society, all of it trying to make sense out of senseless acts, cynical Congressional inaction and the wide berth given by the US Supreme Court to a badly written Second Amendment, theoretically upheld in its literal ambiguity as to just which circumstances call for the right of citizens to bear arms.

This much we do know: something must bring to as close a halt as possible in this mass arsenal of weaponry we call the United States the increasing number and increasingly shocking carnage inflicted by multi-gun-toting, sadly disturbed and untreated societal outliers.

Let us not forget, however, that this sort of bloodletting is a common, everyday occurrence in scores of other countries and cultures ever in upheaval over deadly dictatorships or massive military crackdowns. Deaths of one’s own brothers and sisters of every age and gender occur by the thousands, even millions, in places where ancient sectarian and tribal hatreds rear their miserable heads. To those peoples, our outrage over incidents here may seem laughable.

But, to us, the very idea of one of us killing 20 children and seven adults in one armed rampage bespeaks a sickness of society as well as the young men (always men, or boys, and always white) who carry them out. These killings are not born of ancient sectarian rivalries. These are all our neighbors, our children, our peace of mind. They leave us stunned and numb and wailing for remedies.

Pro-gun advocates try to obscure the truth, but the very existence of guns in a household multiplies the chances someone in that household – not an intruder, but a family member – will be shot, and that the more guns are allowed to be carried in a state, the more gun deaths occur. The statistics defy refuting, including the dangers of allowing one-on-one gun sales with no background checks, even at official gun shows. And so on.

This week, we look at Minnesota’s remedies – or some possible solutions – to a culture so obsessed with its “right” to own, carry and fire guns that any notion that we should look at the Sandy Hooks of this country, this world, as one thing and one thing only: the lethal tirade of man gone mad and lay off the idea that the arsenal we have created by that obsession has anything to do with its deployment.

We have a governor – a DFL governor, and owner of several guns himself – who is afraid our hands are tied in light of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling a couple of years ago, that states cannot abridge such a ruling, even as the space cadets running the National Rifle Association (NRA) and our own Rep Tony Cornish insist that we should arm teachers and principals and/or turn our schools into armed sanctuaries with cops at every door. Never, ever, ever blame the proliferation of weapons or the overweening influence of a gun-manufacturing lackey like the NRA, which, under threat of political demise, has cowed most politicians into the most insane series of statutes ever written on behalf of one industry (except, perhaps oil, hardly the deadly substance).

But, for the next two years at least, we now have an all-DFL-controlled state government, and it remains now for those caucuses and this governor to show the compassion and courage needed to finally put some limits on the types of weapons and bullets and magazines Minnesotans may harbor as well as the conditions under which guns can be purchased and a registry of arms created – some of this now prohibited by federal law.

Is it possible the Supreme Court would give way to a few states’ rights now without the basic Second Amendment ruling being violated? Where can we come down on making our homes and schools and public places safer in the face of severe resistance by the NRA and panicky gunowners who know not that the NRA does not represent them as much as it represents gun-makers?

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL talks with advocates for gun culture reform and changes in law to bring real protection to our children.

HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s probably a good thing that we have the opportunity to catch up with Mel Duncan this Christmas Eve morn. The United States remains in mourning over the violent killings of 27 human beings just over a week ago, 20 of them very young children. Deadly human conflict never ceases. That said, few men – or women, for that matter – can match Mel Duncan’s charismatic quest for peace in this world and in this community.

Four years ago, Mel stepped down as founding director of what will surely be his last organizational leadership position – the Nonviolent Peaceforce. After years working almost exclusively on public policy and social justice issues in Minnesota, something moved him to spread his rather extraordinary mix of quiet affect with a drive and determination for moving issues from concept to reality that he adopted a notion that “various kinds of pressure and influence (could) change the behavior of armed actors” in the ever-present venues of conflict around the globe.

Mel Duncan started his group, spent some long time raising money and awareness of the need for nonviolent intervention between belligerents in many countries, more often than not civil conflicts in which the mere presence of unarmed civilians could defuse potential deadly clashes at particular checkpoints within those nations.

Mel will tell us how things have been going with the Nonviolent Peaceforce since he handed over the reins of management of the NP and what he’s been able to do in his role as the organization’s Advocacy and Outreach Director, a job that clearly frees him from administrative burdens and able to do the substantive work.

Mel tells us that NP currently has peacekeepers in the Mindanao region of the Philippines, South Sudan and the South Caucasus. They are developing a peacekeeping project for Myanmar. Those tuned to the news will recognize those hotspots on the world scene. NP is in the thick of it.

Mel helped organize Advocating Change Together, the Minnesota Jobs with Peace Campaign, the Wellstone for Senate campaign and the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action now merged into TakeAction Minnesota.

Mel Duncan is a graduate of Macalester College, St. Paul Minnesota. In 2006 he was honored with their Distinguished Citizen award. He also holds a Masters degree from the New College of California.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship honored him with their 2010 Peace Seeker award. The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA awarded him their 2007 Pfeffer International Peace Prize on behalf of Nonviolent Peaceforce’s “courageous efforts in conflict regions around the world.”The Utne Reader named him as one of “50 Visionaries Who are Changing Our World” in November of 2008.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL will talk for our Christmas Eve hour with Mel Duncan reporting back on what progress has been made and what is needed in the life of the Nonviolent Peaceforce as 2012 comes to an end.

MOST RECENT SHOW

This week, Andy Driscoll steps across the table from hosting and producing TruthToTell to be interviewed on his life and motivations for the work he's done for six decades in mixed career of on-and-off-air broadcasting, public service and politics, and theatre performance. Dale Connelly will ask the questions, and recorded interviews with key figures in Driscoll's mixed-up world also will be heard to break up the monotony.

On-air guests:

ANDY DRISCOLL, with a brother, a campaign manager and a playwrightInterviewer: DALE CONNELLY

MAKE CIVICMEDIA YOUR END-OF-YEAR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION BENEFICIARY!!! HELP US BRING YOU THESE IMPORTANT DISCUSSIONS OF COMMUNITY INTEREST – PLEASE DONATE HERE!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s probably a good thing that we have the opportunity to catch up with Mel Duncan this Christmas Eve morn. The United States remains in mourning over the violent killings of 27 human beings just over a week ago, 20 of them very young children. Deadly human conflict never ceases. That said, few men – or women, for that matter – can match Mel Duncan’s charismatic quest for peace in this world and in this community.

Four years ago, Mel stepped down as founding director of what will surely be his last organizational leadership position – the Nonviolent Peaceforce. After years working almost exclusively on public policy and social justice issues in Minnesota, something moved him to spread his rather extraordinary mix of quiet affect with a drive and determination for moving issues from concept to reality that he adopted a notion that “various kinds of pressure and influence (could) change the behavior of armed actors” in the ever-present venues of conflict around the globe.

Mel Duncan started his group, spent some long time raising money and awareness of the need for nonviolent intervention between belligerents in many countries, more often than not civil conflicts in which the mere presence of unarmed civilians could defuse potential deadly clashes at particular checkpoints within those nations.

Mel will tell us how things have been going with the Nonviolent Peaceforce since he handed over the reins of management of the NP and what he’s been able to do in his role as the organization’s Advocacy and Outreach Director, a job that clearly frees him from administrative burdens and able to do the substantive work.

Mel tells us that NP currently has peacekeepers in the Mindanao region of the Philippines, South Sudan and the South Caucasus. They are developing a peacekeeping project for Myanmar. Those tuned to the news will recognize those hotspots on the world scene. NP is in the thick of it.

Mel helped organize Advocating Change Together, the Minnesota Jobs with Peace Campaign, the Wellstone for Senate campaign and the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action now merged into TakeAction Minnesota.

Mel Duncan is a graduate of Macalester College, St. Paul Minnesota. In 2006 he was honored with their Distinguished Citizen award. He also holds a Masters degree from the New College of California.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship honored him with their 2010 Peace Seeker award. The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA awarded him their 2007 Pfeffer International Peace Prize on behalf of Nonviolent Peaceforce’s “courageous efforts in conflict regions around the world.” The Utne Reader named him as one of “50 Visionaries Who are Changing Our World” in November of 2008.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL will talk for our Christmas Eve hour with Mel Duncan reporting back on what progress has been made and what is needed in the life of the Nonviolent Peaceforce as 2012 comes to an end.